Coding Adventures with J

First Day Results

2008-09-03T11:03:00.003-04:00

Touchmines was only released yesterday at 3pm, but the response has been amazing! I've already had over 4000 downloads on the first day alone! One thing that struck me was the lack of downloads from the foreign markets relative to the english speaking countries like the US, Canada, and Great Britain.

If you're an iPhone developer, you really need to keep in mind the global audience you're releasing to. My next major step is to localize the product descriptions into as many languages as possible, as well as either localize the app or eliminate the text entirely. I'd rather just use icons for the whole interface, as it reduces the amount of work required for localization and is hopefully more elegant for everyone.

Now I just need to find people willing to translate a few paragraphs into their native language for a beer or two, and maybe ask some experienced developers about their own localization processes. I'm most afraid of using symbols or colours that would be seen as distasteful or unlucky in a foreign culture, since I'm a fairly sheltered north american!

TouchMines is available for download!

2008-09-02T17:09:00.005-04:00

Over at my SpaghettiForge site, I've made some updates and included information on how to play the game (if you've never played minesweeper before). Here's a direct link to the iTunes App Store page.

No looking back...

2008-08-28T10:15:00.003-04:00

Well, I've done it. I've submitted my first iPhone application to Apple. At first I didn't realize I'd need to come up with a company name and create a website for said company. Now, witness the birth of SpaghettiForge! The name is a little self-deprecating humour about every coder's ability to sometimes turn perfectly good ideas into a tangled plate of bad compartmentalization.

The app I've submitted is called TouchMines. It's a minesweeper clone that's completely free, while the other 3 available minesweeper apps cost $0.99. The other developers shouldn't be too worried about my undercutting their prices, because my 1.0 release is very feature-bare and really can only compete for free. When I release future updates, there may have to be come friendly competition and innovation going on (let's hope!).

I also hope this is the just the first of many free, relatively useful apps that I'll release over the coming year.

Vintage Commercial

2008-08-13T16:01:00.007-04:00

Sometimes Apple commercials just blow me away in their bluntness. Of course there are many things you can only do with deep and powerful configuration of your system, the reason i have windows and linux up and running on my laptop. What got me is the idea that there will ALWAYS be a market for the simple devices. Some people will always pay a premium for something whose simplicity blows away any lack of functionality. The day every consumer becomes a coder I'll eat my words with a fair helping of glee.

Do I need an intervention?

2008-06-14T08:45:00.003-04:00

As I previously mentioned, Monday was WWDC keynote day, and I worked all day in a place with no internet. How to keep up with the most important news EVER?

Well, I own a prepaid brick of a cellphone with no internet, so no-go there. But wait, I have unlimited free incoming SMS messages? Hmmmm.

My carrier (like most) has a special email address based on my phone number, which truncates emails to 160 characters and forwards them to my phone as an SMS message. Imagine an automator script that takes the unread rss articles from Mail.app and copies each to a new mail message which is sent to the SMS bridge address? 160 characters is sure limiting, but the headlines all come through at least. Then you just use launchd to have this script send the new articles every 30 mins, and you have "push rss" for free. Albeit kinda clunky and annoying that you only get to read the headlines.

Just a little bit of work to get my Apple news?

The big decision

2008-06-09T23:10:00.004-04:00

I can't say I'm surprised that Apple didn't release anything completely revolutionary today. The iPhone hardware couldn't have changed much without alienating the old EDGE iPhones (which were supposed to be firmware 2.0 compatible). The Macbook Pro non-update also isn't surprising, since until this morning the LAST update was still being advertised on the Apple home page as the "new Macbook Pro".

The big question that remains is: to iPhone or not? I'd be missing out on: built-in camera, mobile internet, GPS, VOIP. Those are pretty compelling, especially considering the new $199 price point. The problem is that, in Canada, Rogers will be requiring a 3-year contract to purchase an iPhone (presumably there is no option to go without the contract). What also scares me is the lack of any plan pricing announcements... If we're signing a 3-year contract at $80 a month, Rogers is now nearly $3000 richer at my expense. As a starving student, that chunk of change is huge... that's over a third of my tuition, or 8 months rent! Or a new 30-inch cinema display and a Mac Mini server.

If any wireless provider could actually screw up the launch of one of the best mobile platforms ever, it's Rogers.

Apple Store is down in Canada! FINALLY!

2008-06-09T10:42:00.003-04:00

So I guess this just about wraps up the waiting for the canadian iPhone. About time! This link should hold at least one interesting thing sometime this afternoon. Who knows, maybe there'll be a new Macbook Pro too! Luckily I've had this one for less than 14 days... 8800gt? 500gb? Higher rez? Sweet macbook-air-inspired case? Only time will tell, and since I work 12:30 - 9 I'll be late to the party for sure.

And another thing...

2008-06-09T00:08:00.002-04:00

Why haven't we got Spotlight for our iPhones and iPod touches yet? I realize typing isn't as responsive with the soft keyboard, but there's only a small amount of info to index: contacts, sms conversations, emails, web history... I'd like to think a "search" app with near-instant response could further differentiate the iPhone from other smartphones.

It would be so cool if I'm right

2008-06-08T23:17:00.004-04:00

Does anyone remember, quite awhile ago, we were told Apple had patented cool new LCD displays with image sensors in between the pixels? This would essentially give you a user-facing webcam. Why has no one speculated on how stupid this is for a computer, and how ingenious it is for oh, say, a mobile phone? Imagine Steve Jobs introducing the new iPhone, with no front-facing camera spot anywhere on the face... disappointment will OOZE from the crowd, until he demos the new iChat Mobile with an "InvisiCam"! That would definitely be a jaw-dropping, Jobs keynote moment. I'm probably wrong, but I'd sure like to be right!

What's up with this whole internet thing?

2008-06-07T23:48:00.004-04:00

So I was just watched this video about the internet and net neutrality, and it got me thinking. Where IS the internet going? It's like when you find a cool new place to hang out with like-minded people, but then it's ruined when it gets "popular" because everyone-and-his-dog shows up with different expectations. Expectations, and the money to influence and change the place you loved, to mold it into just another crowded public area with screaming babies and sterile smiles.

What does this mean? Is the internet just another medium that's being taken over by the masses? Will we always have to give up on our private clubs just when they start to get good? I don't know, but it seems like we'll always at least be the minority. The commercial web has already crowded us into a corner, but we're happy to occupy our own little space if we get to remain in charge. The problem is that in a internet that shifts away from neutrality, we're told to pay up, clean up, and follow their rules or else show ourselves out. We lose our ownership in the web: it becomes their network on their terms.

Maybe market forces WILL favour those ISPs and networks that stand up for net neutrality, when consumers vote with their wallets. I doubt it'll happen: a de-facto cartel of networks is more likely, since they all stand to gain if no one gives the consumer the neutral choice. And I have an inkling that advertising and media dollars far outweigh residential internet fees.

Maybe one of those new-fangled high-speed global networks will turn out? And someone will have the foresight to ban the commercialization and ugly behaviour we're seeing now? Sure, it means the network won't ever make it big and take over "the internet". Isn't that just what we'd like?

The last option, the one that seems coolest right now, but least likely to succeed due to the sheer infrastructure, is what I might call a "hyper-local network". Imagine a mesh network connecting all the houses in your neighbourhood, as far as the signal carries. Here and there would be portals to other networks, and obviously internet connections too for longer-distance communication. In today's world of contributing netizens, this could probably be set up tomorrow in many areas. The locally-oriented network would certainly change the dynamics of sharing and communication, but they would be ours and ours alone. Although I wasn't old enough to be using them at the time, this brings the image of a web 2.0 BBS to my head. And I find it quite exciting.

iPhone SDK

2008-03-10T11:13:00.005-04:00

Well, the SDK is finally out! I can't say I haven't been waiting with bated breath, and it turned out to be mostly better than I expected.

Of course I love that everything is more or less Cocoa based, and the sheer number of APIs available to a developer wanting to take full advantage of the iPhone's hardware. What I really like though, is the distribution side of things.The apps distribution goes directly through the App Store, free apps will be completely free to consumer AND dev, and that Apple will charge a paltry ($99) fee for being able to post apps to the store. Some will complain about the fee, but even as a hobbyist student dev $99 is totally worth it. I like to think the entry fee will stem the flow of crapware to the platform, and it's needed to prevent the App Store from having hundreds of thousands of Hello World apps to wade through.

My biggest complaint is that it's mostly US only. Right now the "beta" for the full developer program is open to select developers in the United States, and nowhere else. This wouldn't be much of a problem, except that you cannot test your code on an iPhone or iPod touch without the paid beta program. While the NDA probably prevents me from disclosing exactly why the iPhone simulator isn't really a complete alternative for testing, let's just say I'm waiting for the program to be open in June. I hope that's a general enough statement that Apple lawyers won't be mad at me (although I'd need at least one certified reader before I could really get any complaints!).

I think it'll probably take me until June to fully absorb the general concepts and abilities of the iPhone SDK, so by the time I'm able to really get crackin I'll be up to the challenge. Until then, we'll see what other cool developments Apple has up it's sleeve.

Holiday Post

2008-01-02T22:58:00.000-05:00

Holidays have been exciting, it's always nice to be home. Just thought I would post a link to the coolest thing I've seen in quite a while. It's not related to programming at all, but Nikon's Universcale gives you an animated, interactive comparative scale of common objects, from the apparent size of the universe down to the atom. Very cool!

grumble

2007-12-13T07:42:00.000-05:00

SomeDegree writeExams(Knowledge k, Studying s, Coffee c)
{
k.clear();
s.cramWith(c);
return null;
}

While I'm Here

2007-12-11T00:07:00.000-05:00

Recently I've taken the whole engineer-as-artist thing a little seriously, so I've started reading industrial design, typography, modern art and web design blogs. I think it's made me broaden my horizons a little to get a fresh perspective on "design", and what it means to create. I'll post the coolest ones once I've had time to live with them.

This leads to my random reason for coming back to post, which is a font I made. It's a bitmapped, 10-point font that you can "design" yourself and auto-generate to .ttf online here. Mine is called "NewGothic", and was based on a typeface called "from Gothic" in Samuel Welo's 1935 edition Studio Handbook: Letter and Design for Artists and Advertisers. It's actually a really cool book that I picked up before I got on this design trip, since it was this neat 1935-printed book for $5 or something. I loved the pages and binding, and the concept of hand-lettering and drawing posters seemed quite foreign to me! Glad I picked it up in any case.

Been A While

2007-12-10T23:39:00.000-05:00

It has indeed been a while. Just a quick post, because I thought I should actually contribute things here more often, and also thought I had something useful that other people might borrow and extend for free.

What I've written is a quick little AppleScript script that takes your currently selected text file, and "un-gutenbergizes" it. What I mean is that it removes all those senseless newlines they put into Project Gutenberg ebooks, and gives you back a text file with paragraphs that actually wrap! It's the only practical way to view ebooks on my new iPod Touch and/or Tofu on my Mac, which is an excellent text viewer and "columnifier". I've read entire books with my macbook sitting on my chest, lying down in bed, with Tofu. I think it's truly the next gen of readable ebooks, and we need an iPod/iPhone port!

For those interested in actually using the script, there are caveats since I don't really USE applescript (more on that next time!). First of all, it has a giant bug that means you must run it "indirectly". It only works if you select your file, then run it from your scripts menu on the menu bar. Double-clicking on the script file app itself and/or just dragging your text file to it does not work. Don't know why. Also, you WILL need TextWrangler installed, as that is how I automagically replace \n's with spaces and keep \n\n's the same.

As for a bullet-proof, drag-and-drop, stand-alone Cocoa app that does the right thing, that is coming soon enough. It really won't be much more coding than I used in the AppleScript, but it's more time than I have in between exam studying-periods. I wish they made a C-syntax language that let you use all the scripting hooks; I HATE AppleScript! Oh wait, they put that in Leopard with the beautiful, beautiful scripting bridge. I officially [heart] Leopard just for that! Oh, and free garbage collection too!

Also I just realized that there's no actual way to upload real FILES to a blogger.com blog, so let's just pretend I never offered a buggy AppleScript app in the first place, kay? A real developer (such as yours truly) wouldn't do that! So until I write the new code (and find a free host for my files), enjoy some nerdy science lolcats.

Back to School!

2007-09-18T20:58:00.000-04:00

Well here I am in Kingston, Ontario, for another year of computer engineering. My mac's been out of commission in one way or another for about a month now, since they couldn't complete the repairs at home and I had to begin the process anew at an Apple dealer here. In that time, Cocoa has again started becoming a distant memory, but I felt I should be posting something of interest here. Starting tomorrow, I'll be updating this blog more regularly with personal posts that will remain in the spirit of mac programming, and of interest to readers (I hope).

On Linux

2007-08-23T15:40:00.000-04:00

While my MBP is in the shop, I've been relegated to using my old spare-parts-built AMD box with an install of an older Fedora distribution. This was a relic from my first year of university, where I decided to do some Linux experimentation. I tried a few distros, and was satisfied with all of Fedora's built-in apps. I loved how my computer didn't ever crash or pop up useless error boxes (The Automatic Update Warning icon that wouldn't leave my tray drove me insane!). I managed to cope with alternative programs, and even found that Matlab would run faster and more stably on linuxs!

And then the tweaking started. Linux is a bad idea for people like me, who are both perfecionists and fairly technically inclined, or at least willing to learn. One simple error or missing library could lead to hours of searching and updating and installing, ad infinitum. That doesn't even count the simple graphical and UI tweaks. It is actually much more productive for me NOT to have so many options.

Even today, I found myself customizing my setup of Puppy Linux, adding in the fluxbox window manager, customizing the menus, and configuring the sound card settings. These demonstrate what really drove me to the Mac in the first place:

I was messing with the sound card configuration because Puppy would not find or use the much higher quality soundblaster installed in my system, preferring to use the crappy motherboard sound chip that has a very high noise level.

Even after installing the ALSA sound config tools, I could still not get the card to work, so I'm now stuck with annoying bad sound on a computer which is my only source of music.

Did you notice I said I was using Puppy Linux? It's a great live-cd distro that runs completely in memory, very snappy and efficient. I use it because my regular Fedora 5 install is having very strange internet problems, probably associated with some weird DNS configuration that I can't find. Some sites will load, and gaim will log in, but most sites are stuck in the perpetual "Looking up www.site.com" state. Without web access, a computer is mostly useless to me.

Some might say that the inoperability of the sound card, internet, etc., are my fault and that I could have sovled these issues if I was smart enough. I agree that I could have fixed these issues with enough research, twiddling and effort, but should I really have to in a modern operating system? Add certain insurmountable hardware issues and the incessant installing of required libraries for each and every program, and you get mostly frustration, hence my conversion to everything Apple.

I sometimes miss the customizability of, well, everything of a Linux box, but I have been very satisfied with my Mac experience, and am instantly reminded of the "Apple Way" every time I use another system. I really don't mind spending the money on an OS that does things in a more unified, elegant and comprehensible way. Besides, let's estimate my time is worth $25 an hour. I know I could not build a Linux setup equivalent to OS X in 5 hours, so it's economically more feasible to go with the Mac anyways.

If anyone actually reads this blog yet besides me, and also happens to be an OSS devotee (why are you on a mac development site?), please no flames in the comments ok? The use of an OS is a personal choice, just as is the choice of a watch, car or hair style. There are options everywhere, and I believe that everyone must make the choice that suits them most. Stop making software choice a religious crusade!

Fate?

2007-08-23T15:14:00.000-04:00

So I am currently mac-less, as Sunday evening when I opened the lid on my Macbook Pro to awaken it from sleep, the display flickered on once and then stayed off. After a hard shut-down, it would only make scary looking flashes in the corner of the screen when powering on, without even getting to the Mac boot sound. Needless to say, I was scared.

So when I brought it into the local Mac repair shop (No apple stores within hours of my home), I was ecstatic to hear the boot sound and see the login screen, albeit with a flashlight. Turns out resetting the PRAM is a more powerful incantation than I'd ever realized! Pat, the very nice Mac guru of the shop, said they'd have a replacement backlight in lickety-split and hopefully even the new keyboard replacement as well.

The keyboard is an issue I'd rather not get into, suffice it to say that my up and right cursor keys no longer function. This makes coding fairly annoying, but the display issue is actually much more disappointing, as this screen was actually only put in a couple months ago. The original had been making progessively louder buzzing noises after waking from sleep, and it had been replaced with a shiny new display from Apple. I'm actually disappointed by these quality issues in the hardware, since this is my first macintosh, but I've at least been reassured to know that Apple hardware service is relatively prompt and painless.

Needless to say, I have purchased the AppleCare Protection Plan.

Actual Programming!

2007-08-13T09:27:00.003-04:00

Ok, so It's been just over a week since I began this blog. What have I accomplished? Well, I've gotten over a cold, learned that peaches and cinnamon were made exclusively for inclusion in chicken pot pies, and finally broke out my copy of Aaron Hillegass' Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X to continue learning the beauty that is Cocoa.

I've had quite a long sabbatical from this standard Cocoa beginner's tool, but I'm finally making my way through Chapter 7 and figuring out the Undo Manager. Woohoo! Now that I'm back on the train, I'll start fleshing out my current projects. One is going to be a dead simple, elegant and FREE money manager. Nothing to replace the more advanced programs out there, but enough to quit using a friggin spreadsheet! This project was born out of my frustration of, well, using a spreadsheet. The second project is a bit neater, and uses a slightly more diverse set of tools to get its job done.

It's a text-to-speech converter, mainly for converting ebooks into audiobooks that I can listen to on my iPod. The beauty is its integration with iTunes, using a bit of AppleScript to automatically tag the files and convert them into a low bitrate. My next step is to rework the splitting algorithm, which was initially "borrowed" from Matthew Russell's DIY iPod eDoc Reader Tutorial posted on the O'Reilly Mac DevCenter site. Finally, I hope to unravel iTunes' inner workings to add these files to the Audiobooks section of the iTunes library. Someday, I may even extend this program to read RSS feeds and sync new ones to an iPod as a podcast.

That's all for today, cheers.

You're making me dizzy!

2007-08-08T11:13:00.000-04:00

So in the next few days/weeks/months, this blog will undergo incremental changes in style. I'm very much a perfectionist, so I'll keep experimenting with different colour and font combinations until I find a very nice compromise. Eventually I hope to develop my own unique style sheets, but let's not jump the shark.

In design, I appreciate elegance and simplicity. A great example is something like John Gruber's Daring Fireball, but John I swear I'll try not to copy you outright! To my (obviously growing) audience: please bear with me as I ~~perfect~~ optimize your web experience.

iMac Day

2007-08-08T10:33:00.000-04:00

So yesterday Steve Jobs made me wish I could quit school to afford a 24" iMac (well not really, but my 1G macbook pro is starting to show it's age). One thing that's got me really excited is the new keyboards. I absolutely adore the low-profile keyboard of my mbp, so responsive and precise, and have always wished my USB apple keyboard felt the same.

Now I just need to find an excuse to spend another $50 on a keyboard, when I'm about to spend another $300 on OS X/iWork/iLife upgrades in the next few months. Being a poor student blows (in case no one ever told you).

this is me

2007-08-05T15:09:00.000-04:00

Hello to anyone who might be reading my new blog!

My name's Jason, and I'm a Computer Engineering student up in the great cold country of Canada. Well, at this time of year, at least the beer is cold. There. No further clicheed canuck jokes required.

I'm starting this blog to document my debut in the brave new world (to me, at least) of computers and the internet! I've always been fairly techno-savvy, but I'm only now learning software development, web design, and all those little hacking skills that accompany them.

I have a little experience with other environments, but I've just begun to learn Macintosh app development and that'll be the main focus of this blog. I'll keep you updated on projects I'll work on, and little tips for other newcomers. I'm also kinda fooling around with web development, so I might just drop a few tidbits on my progress here and there.

I intend this blog to be a tool, to force myself to work on projects regularly. If I get lazy, there will finally be consequences in that I'll have nothing to post. But if you happen to derive any use or satisfaction out of this little experiment, all the better to you!